Folders on the Android desktop, and how to rename them

Thanks to Matt Miller at ZDNet’s The Mobile Gadgeteer, I now know how to rename a folder on the Android desktop. It isn’t rocket science, and I’m sure plenty of you out there stumbled upon it on your own. But since it’s not obvious, I thought it might be worthwhile to share how it works – and what folders are good for in the first place.

For starters, create a folder on one of the three desktop panels by long pressing somewhere on the screen and selecting Folder from the Shortcut menu. Move it to a better position on the desktop, if you like. We’ll all wait for you.

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Now that you have the folder, open it up by taping on it. If you then long press on the title bar of the window that pops up, Android will prompt you for a new folder name. That’s the secret sauce ingredient you need to know if you don’t want a desktop full of folders all cleverly named “Folder.”

Now that you have your folder, you can start populating it. I like to use one for my most common browser bookmarks, but you can also put applications in them as well. That would be a good way to organize all of your games in one place, for example. The coolest thing with folders from my view is that their windows stay open even if you switch to a different panel of the desktop. You can therefore use them as a way to kinda add additional panels to the desktop. You could have your work apps and work bookmarks all in one folder, for example, and just by opening it up you’d have a nice little work desktop on your phone that would stay open until you were ready to start goofing off again.

You can’t put widgets like the clock or Google search bar in a folder, but all of the other desktop creatures seem to be quite at home in them.

If you have any other tips that you think others might like to hear about, let us know.